Why I Spend my Summers Innovating at NTT i³

I am currently a Ph.D. student at The College of William and Mary, where I’m studying computer science specializing in wearable technology for health care for athletes. As a former college athlete, the potential for wearable devices and IoT to transform how we live is particularly personal and important to me.

In the past, I have had the opportunity to be a part of some really cool internship projects including working with a Formula 1 Racing Team and creating wearable technology for NASA. This year, I decided to return to NTT i³ for my summer internship. This is my second year with the organization, and to this day, I can clearly remember how and why I decided to spend my summers innovating with the team.

In 2014, I attended Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, interviewing with various companies for my 2015 summer internship. One of my interviews was with an insurance company, and that day, I received an offer from them. However, much to my surprise, as I was leaving my interview, one of the individuals with whom I interviewed informed me that she knew of a CEO in Silicon Valley that might be interested in me.

Fast forward a few months later, and I received a random call from that company’s CEO. And that company turned out to be NTT i³. During our call, I received an offer and accepted it that week. I was sold on the group’s innovative style – especially the ability to work on anything that I was passionate about and make it into a product. Based on this alone, I knew that interning at NTT i³ was the best offer, so I started my first summer internship in 2015.

That summer, I was given the ability to choose what I wanted work on. After going through all the cool devices in the Spark room, I decided to build a stress tracking system using the NTT DoCoMo Hitoe shirt that offers biometric measurements, such as heart rate. The stress tracker scaled stress from zero to ten, with good stress ranging from three to six and anything above six indicated high levels of stress.

As my internship progressed, I decided that I wanted to return to NTT i³ for another summer internship, and my decision was primarily based on my experience with the Mylan hackathon team in Pittsburgh. I was impressed by the team’s talent and could see firsthand the process of turning a concept into a fully functional system. I was also provided the opportunity to be our team’s presenter during the hackathon’s Q&A. This turned out to be the perfect role for me as I love presenting.

At the hackathon, we only had five minutes to make our presentation, and I’m proud to say that we were the only team to present within the allocated time. In fact, we finished with seven seconds to spare!

This summer, I am helping develop an IoT platform that will be turned into a commercial product. We recently completed our first proof of concept and are working to further refine the product.

I believe NTT i³ is different than other Silicon Valley-based companies largely in part to the group’s talent pool. No matter where you are – R&D or data or AI – everyone has their hands in an innovative project that will change the ways in which we live, work and play. Without question, in my mind, it’s rare to have so much innovation and talent within one company. And, that’s why I’ve chosen to return for my second internship.